Bucks Balks At Plan For Rehab Center Furniture At $850,000

Bucks County commissioners yesterday temporarily derailed a plan to spend $850,000 for furnishings for the new county Rehabilitation Center.

Commissioners, who believe furniture at the old minimum-security prison still is usable, will inspect it tomorrow before a meeting of the county Prison Board in Doylestown Township.

"It isn't in my nature to give carte blanche to use the balance of the construction fund for new furniture and to blindly discard the old," said Commissioner Mark S. Schweiker.

The new $4.5-million facility, scheduled for completion next fall, is next to the old rehabilitation center, built in 1963 and now considered inadequate for minimum-security inmates.

The county's purchasing department last week received bids on furnishings for the new center. Purchasing Director Frederick R. Gudknecht said he delayed awarding contracts until he receives verification from corrections officials that none of the furnishings from the old center could be used in the new facility.

That verification may not be coming soon, though. Bidding on the furnishings apparently was ordered by former Warden Arthur M. Wallenstein, who left in September to take a job in Seattle. Wallenstein has not been replaced.

Regardless of who ordered the bids, the commissioners plan a personal inspection of the old beds, chairs and other items when the Prison Board meets tomorrow. The commissioners as well as the controller, president judge, sheriff and district attorney are members of the Prison Board.

Commissioner Andrew L. Warren said he is inclined to outfit the building with new furniture.

"I'd agree it makes a lot of sense to start out with furniture that was made for the building," said Warren. "No one intends to coddle criminals or make worldly comforts available to them, but you don't want to invest people's money in a brand new facility with furniture that could wreck up the inside."

The rehabilitation center is designed to house minimum-security inmates, including prisoners sentenced to 48-hour terms for drunken driving convictions. Inmates who qualify for a work-release program spend their nights in the facility.

Among the items that were ordered for the new center were furniture, beds, bedding, television sets, housekeeping materials, kitchen equipment, medical equipment, office furniture and equipment and shop tools.

"They are asking for 270 new mattresses," said Gudknecht.

The last time the commissioners faced a similar circumstance was 1985, when the Bucks County Prison was completed and the 100-year-old jail on Pine Street in Doylestown was closed. Warren said that few pieces of furniture in the old prison could be moved to the new facility.

For example, he said, the beds and tables in the cells couldn't be moved because they were bolted to the walls by the Quaker craftsmen who built the jail in the 1880s.

Warren said he understands most of the furniture in the old rehabilitation center can't be used.

"Some of that stuff is literally falling apart," he said. "It doesn't make much sense to open up a new facility and put in furniture that is in disrepair."